


Coming Home

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Comment Fic 2016 [54]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-21
Updated: 2016-08-21
Packaged: 2018-08-10 06:20:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,096
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7833661
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Written for the comment_fic prompt: 'Stargate Atlantis, Evan Lorne/David Parrish, "You have a package waiting for you on Earth" turns out to be a young child conceived before either of them went to Pegasus.'</p><p>David has a child on Earth. Evan stays behind on Atlantis.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Coming Home

**Author's Note:**

  * For [clwilson2006](https://archiveofourown.org/users/clwilson2006/gifts).



Evan knew everyone was staring at him, and he really, really wanted to strangle Chuck for breaking radio voice protocol. It had been an accident, yes, but he’d still announced to the entire base: “Belay that, Major Lorne. Correction: it’s not a package waiting for you on Earth. It’s a baby.” He’d radioed for David, hadn’t found him, done the logical thing and radioed for Evan, knowing Evan always knew where everyone on base was (and that David was likely to be with Evan), and asked Evan to pass on a message. Which Evan was glad to do. The private transmission ended.  
  
And then Chuck opened up a channel again, so hastily he hit PA instead of private channel, and delivered his message.  
  
Evan wanted to say, “I’m military, not easy!” Not every soldier was so desperate and horny that he went and got laid every chance he had. People had self-control. So what if Evan had long dry spells? He was a very busy man. Besides, being bi meant he didn’t have nearly as long dry spells as a lot of the straight guys did.  
  
As soon as the transmission ended, Evan said, “Is there something you want to tell me?” He’d foolishly assumed David was gay, since David mostly seemed to have opinions on the attractiveness of male members of the expedition and was oblivious to the admiring attentions of Heidi in Engineering and Kusanagi in Physics.  
  
David had sunk down on the edge of the bed, pale. “Right before I shipped out, the guys threw me an early thirty-fifth birthday party, because I wouldn’t be around to celebrate it myself. There was a lot of drinking, and there were some women from town. Neighbors to some of the guys. One of them was really pretty. We talked, we hit it off. We had sex. I -”  
  
Evan swallowed down the hurt that rose in his throat. He and David hadn’t even known each other then, had no obligation to each other then. But David definitely had an obligation to that child. He’d looked up at Evan, and Evan knew, without a doubt, that David was going back to Earth. For good.  
  
Evan wanted him to stay, desperately, because it was a messed-up universe out here, and at the end of the day, David was what made it all right. But Evan knew that if David stayed, if he refused responsibility for that child, he wasn’t the kind of man Evan wanted to be with after all.  
  
So here Evan was, hurrying to the gate room to say goodbye to David, possibly for the last time.  
  
David stood there with his pack. He’d write back and let Atlantis know if he needed the rest of his things shipped back to Earth on the Daedalus.  
  
Up in Ops, Chuck had his head down very meekly while he fired up the Stargate. Elizabeth stood at the railing, arms crossed, expression unreadable. Evan could still feel everyone staring at him. The rumors had spread across the base almost immediately. Major Lorne got a girl knocked up. Major Lorne was getting sent down. David still looked shell-shocked, face too white in the blue glow of the event horizon in the gate.  
  
Elizabeth instructed Chuck to radio through to the planet. The Daedalus had come to the edge of the Pegasus Galaxy, and to speed things up for David - the mother of the child had died, freak car accident, custody of the child was his - he was gating to the nearest planet to be beamed up.  
  
At the crackle of radio transmission from Colonel Caldwell, Evan knew his time was up.  
  
“Go,” Evan said quietly. “Do what you have to do.”  
  
David bit his lip. “Evan -”  
  
Evan shook his head. Then he leaned in and kissed David, softly, and stepped back. Everyone was still staring at him, but he didn’t care anymore, didn’t care if he got busted down for an Article 125 violation, because his whole world had just fallen apart, and there was nothing he could do about it. He was second-in-command of a military outpost in an alien galaxy. He had a couple hundred marines at his disposal. And he was powerless.  
  
David shouldered his pack and stepped through the gate, and then the wormhole closed down.  
  
There was a long silence, and then Elizabeth said, “Okay, people. Back to work.”

Evan sleepwalked through his duties for the next month and a half. Rumors had settled down - he wasn’t the father of any child back on Earth. But Dr. Parrish had been, and he’d gone back to Earth to do his duty to his family. Not even Dr. McKay, who prized work and science over all else, could find fault with his decision. It was the only one. It was Parrish’s baby. Evan slept alone, and he ate alone, and he wandered the halls alone. He went through the gate with his team - Katie Brown had replaced David, and she still had a lot of work to do to stay gate-rated - and he came back with his team, and he sat in his empty room and felt hollow.  
  
He was being a stupid emo teenager, and he knew it, but _David was gone._  
  
What was he supposed to do with his life?  
  
Sheppard tried, all of once, to cheer him up with beers and an action flick.  
  
It was Teyla who gave Evan the answer he was looking for.  
  
“When you go back to Earth,” she said, accompanying him from the training hall to the mess hall after an embarrassing round with the bantos rods, “will you stay with Stargate Command? Or choose a posting less perilous? For your family.”  
  
Evan said, “I’d like to stay with the SGC if I can. I know it has much higher casualty rates than a lot of other postings, but I have the Gene, and I wouldn’t want that to go to waste.”  
  
“That is a good point.” Teyla smiled and inclined her head respectfully. “Whatever you choose, I am sure it will be what is best for your family.”  
  
Your family.  
  
Evan hadn’t heard from David in weeks. He’d tried to write an email for the weekly databurst a hundred times, but the words had never come.  
  
“Thanks, Teyla.” He leaned in, kissed her on the cheek, and then dashed away to Elizabeth’s office.  
  
“Major Lorne?”  
  
“Ma’am,” he said, “on the next transfer cycle, I’d like to go home.”  
  
Elizabeth nodded. “Get me the paperwork.”  
  
“Thank you, ma’am.”  
  
That night, Evan sent an email to David.  
  
_I’m coming home._


End file.
